Four years after Hurricane Katrina, 20,000 children remain in crisis

A new report provides some remedy to the dysfucntional disaster response system that has left more than 20,000 gulf region children in crisis more than four years after the hurricane. The Children's health Fund calls for a new case managment protocal as a part of a creation of a national recovery framework.

Irwin Redlener, MD, who is President of Children's Health Fund and Member of the National Commission on Children and Disasters, will provide recommendations to protect children and Families in the aftermath of future disasters to the Disaster Recovery Subcommittee today. ( Wednesday, December 2)

The Children's Health Fund (CHF), a national organization that advocates for and develops programs that provide clinical care to children in need including three permanent projects in the
Gulf Coast area - New Orleans, LA; Gulfport, MS and Baton Rouge, LA - released today a report recommending that a single lead federal agency, rather than the current mix of federal and local organizations, should be designated to coordinate the implementation of all future disaster case
management programs in the Gulf and elsewhere.

Case Management is an essential part of disaster recovery, a process that coordinates, implements, monitors and evaluates the individual and/or families' health and human service needs. Effective disaster case management ensures that children and families are protected from secondary, long-term
trauma following a major catastrophe.

It is uncertain how many individuals and families impacted by Hurricane Katrina still remain in recovery. It is widely acknowledged among public health and disaster management professionals that 20,000 or more children are still in recovery or in uncertain conditions with respect to housing, education, and access to essential services.

The imminent opportunity to reform federal disaster case management as part of the creation of a National Recovery Framework and reform of the Stafford Act encouraged CHF to bring together key stakeholders around disaster case management to establish recommendations on both the local and national level. The participants included organizations that currently provide different programs to the hurricane-impacted community. Members from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA), with providers and advocates for
disaster case management services participated in a roundtable event on October 7, 2009, as well as interested parties from academia, the private sector, and foundations.

The group concluded that a single federal model for case management should be rapid and sustainable, local and appropriately funded, among other things.

Further, two important points noted in the report, include:

* Significant disaster related destruction of communities and infrastructure inevitably requires long-term rebuilding which may result in a prolonged and difficult recovery for individuals and families, many of whom will require supportive case management.

* When case management programs fall short, they tend to fail the most
vulnerable in the affected communities.

The tragic issue is though planning is being provided for future disasters, support for 20,000 children is needed now, or there may be significant costs to our society later.